


Forever is a Dirty Word

by DoreyG



Category: The Bible
Genre: Angstangstangst, Community: kink_bingo, M/M, Mainly on the penance side, Messed up characters all around, Modern times, Possible AU, penance/punishment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>‘And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover his face that he may not see light.’</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever is a Dirty Word

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Punishment/Penance square of my Kink_Bingo. And I had to do these two because they're perhaps the most gloriously angsty pairing around. Set in modern times but not a modern AU.

‘And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover his face that he may not see light.’

…Forever.

But, truly, not even Father had any idea what forever actually meant – He thought it would last perhaps a few decades, a few centuries, a few _millennia_ at most. He never thought that the world, such a fragile and easily shattered thing, would march onwards for _that_ long.

But the decades passed, and the flood rose and fell while he writhed upon the rocks.

But the centuries ticked onwards, and people started to wear different clothes and speak different languages and even abandon their beards in favour of the earnest looks of young men while he cowered in the darkness.

But the _millennia_ started going by, and electricity rose and women cast off their chains and make-up started being worn more freely and people started to stop believing in God and _were not punished for it_ while he forgot what it was to stand in the light.

Forever.

_Forever_.

In the end it was realized that nobody quite knew what ‘forever’ _really_ meant.

In the end he was released, pulled from the rough and jagged rocks and set blinking upon the desert soil. The world open and free and so very changed around him – the spires of a city rising in the distance, the plants around him completely and utterly different, the planet turning under his feet in an unfamiliar way.

“You have been forgiven,” his former brothers said.

“You are allowed out,” his former brothers decided.

“Forever wasn’t quite as long as it seemed at the start, hm?” His former brothers sniped, as they disappeared into nothing and left him standing alone in the desert.

…Forever.

He swayed a little, unused to having legs.

He started walking, step by step to those distant spires. For there was absolutely nothing else to do.

 

\--

 

He meets Raphael again in a bar in New York city about three months after he’s been released. He flew to America two weeks ago, managed to keep himself from gawping at the grand contraption he found himself crowded into – also managed to keep himself from gawping at the many people crowding into the flight around him.

He knows which one he’s more proud of.

The world has changed so much, he muses as he slowly sips at his beer and lets the odd taste rest upon his tongue, what was once sinful is now incredibly normal – and people are looked down on if they don’t do it. What was once unthinkable is easily accepted fact. What he was once locked away for-

His hands tighten on the glass, just slightly.

…And it is, of course, at that moment that Raphael chooses to come walking back into his life. The crowds suddenly parting and the man (angel) appearing across the bar as if by magic.

He’s wearing a human body now, not the terrible thing that he last saw him in. A suit, as if he’s on the job even while in such an apparently relaxing place. Brown hair, curling wildly across his head despite his obvious attempts to tame it. Dark eyes, trying to be stern but failing so very obviously.

They stare at each other for a moment, mutely.

…And then, because he’s gone through hatred and rage and sadness and betrayal to a place where he only feels numb, he raises his glass – a faint toast, a soft acknowledgement that they’re all at sea in this new world with all its strangeness.

Trust Raphael to take that as an invitation. Trust Raphael to appear at his shoulder with all the speed of one of those cheetahs he’s heard about on the news, “I’m sorry.”

He blinks…

It’s too late for surprise. He only sighs, lifts his drink to his lips, takes a long sip and allows Raphael to watch him, “are you?”

“I shouldn’t have bound you-“

“Somebody would’ve had to bind me,” he says mildly, takes another sip – slightly shorter this time (maybe to spare Raphael’s nerves, maybe not. He’s still not quite sure if he cares), “and you would’ve probably been cast down too if you’d refused. That’s not something to feel guilty over.”

“…Then I’m sorry for reporting you.”

He hums over that, sets his drink down on the stained wood of the bar proper (because it no longer appeals, hasn’t really appealed since the moment he ordered it – it was just something to do with his hands, something to take his mind off the things he’s _sure_ should be there), “but it wasn’t only you, was it?”

“…No,” Raphael is forced to admit quietly, nervously swaying in his seat (he’s so skinny in this form, like a bird that could easily be snapped), “Michael did too, and Gabriel.”

“Michael is good at casting people down.”

“Mm,” Raphael lets out a moment of a husky laugh. Stops, stares at his hands again - like he’s guilty about even _that_ , “but Michael is good, Michael is proper, Michael does not feel guilt about things after he’s done them.”

“That’s because he’s not supposed to feel guilt.”

“Yes, because he _is_ good and _is_ proper,” Raphael sighs wearily, and he suspects that he’d be talking _very slowly_ if it was to any other person (angel, demon – he’s not quite sure what he is now and it’s a mild surprise to find that he doesn’t really care), “if only we could all be like him.”

He takes that in for a moment, resting his elbows either side of the drink.

“…Oh,” he says slowly, turning briefly to look down into it – possibly in the vague hope that the sight of his reflection will trigger _something_ within him, “you really _do_ feel guilty.”

“I thought you knew.”

“That was only mockery, or something like it,” he stares down for another contemplative moment – finally turns, props his chin on his palm and watches the expression on Raphael’s face, “there really is no need to feel guilty, you know.”

Raphael remains silent, his expression indeed fascinating.

“It’s as I said,” he continues, almost gently – or maybe just dispassionately enough to masquerade, “somebody else would’ve had to bind me, somebody else _did_ report me. You were just a pawn being moved slowly on a board-“

“ _Yes_!” And Raphael is suddenly yelling. An odd sight – considering that he’s half forgotten what anger and sadness look like, “but I’m the only pawn who fucking _felt_ it, aren’t I?”

He frowns slightly in the face of such rage.

Picks up his drink again, cradles the amber liquid absently to his chest as he watches Raphael’s eyes, the heave of his chest, the broken open expression on his face as if he’s bottled this up for so many years and will explode if he doesn’t let it all gush out now, “you have a rather high sense of your own importance.”

“…Perhaps,” and Raphael slumps for a second. Defeated, hurt, like he could simply disappear into himself at this very moment and not leave a single scar upon the world.

But then he reaches out, as grabs his free hand in a sweaty and desperate grip, “but that doesn’t matter. You have to let me make it up to you, you have to let me make it better, _please_.”

He stares for another moment…

Sets his glass down again, pulls out his wallet and prepares to pay with the money that he’s somehow gathered over his months in this strange new world, “alright, then.”

 

\--

 

He would like to say that Raphael’s flat is not what he was expecting, or even exactly what he was expecting, but that’d be a lie and he doesn’t have the energy for those. It is simply a flat to him – a plain space. Stark, lonely, covered in tattered papers that all point to one big clue.

“You’re a doctor,” he says quietly, picking one of the more wrinkled papers up and turning it over. It shows a man, still most definitely Raphael but looking different, standing in front of a hospital and holding a smiling child. Even in that his eyes contain some haunted sadness.

“Well, what else was I going to be?” Raphael sighs, locks the door behind them (sensible, he supposes, in New York City) and turns around with slumped shoulders, “angel of healing, that _was_ my job.”

He waits for a long moment before asking, “was?”

“I tried to be an angel after you, I did try,” and Raphael gives the answer almost instantly, walking closer with that slump stretching to his entire body now, “cured an old man of his blindness, banished another demon to the desert. But the aftertaste was acidic – and in the end the only option was to melt away.”

He thinks over that, quietly. Turns it in his head as Raphael takes off his suit jacket and throws it calmly over the back of his sofa, “you’re no longer in contact with Michael?”

“Or Gabriel,” Raphael acknowledges with a slow nod, “or Uriel, or any of the others. I don’t think I’ve seen them for a thousand years at _least_.”

“You must miss them,” he says. Again, almost gentle.

“I would’ve probably had to hurt them in the end,” Raphael’s eyes darken even further – a look of hatred lurking there, stretching poisonous claws steadily inwards, “it appears to be in my nature.”

He _is_ , and still he has no energy for lying, mildly surprised when Raphael kisses him but he allows it. Even braces himself against the back of the sofa, digs his fingers there as Raphael licks fiercely into his mouth.

“Please,” and _speaks_ roughly into his mouth. Voice shaking, juddering, warping into something less angel and more _afraid_ , “ _please_ -“

He draws back, vaguely aware of something that is _almost_ a spark of interest. Runs his hands carefully through Raphael’s thick hair, smoothing it back from his splotchily red face, “please what?”

“ _Please_ -“ Raphael starts again, catches himself. Looks up with those still dark eyes, his lip slightly stuck out as if he’s bracing himself for something, “make it hurt, make me feel it, make me _pay_ for what I did to you and all that I could’ve done to others.”

He pauses in shock for a moment-

He stops smoothing Raphael’s hair back. Lowers his hand until it’s resting on Raphael’s shoulder, right on his crisply pristine shirt, “are you sure?”

And Raphael’s eyes are fierce, “more sure than I’ve ever been.”

…And, well, he doesn’t have the energy _or_ the emotional capacity to refuse that. He’s too hurt, too broken, too scooped out and discarded by the many years alone with only his terrified whimpers for company.

Luckily Raphael’s bedroom is only a short stumble away, one of the good things about the lack of space in this cramped city. He is not gentle about removing clothes, just as Raphael asked for. He rips them off: that pristine shirt tumbling armless into a corner, those dress trousers helplessly ripped and sliding off his hips, shoes and socks battered and kicked off, underwear brutally gone-

He looks thinner naked, more human. He palms a bony hip and listens to the resulting pained gasp with something that might once have been interest.

Raphael is easy to spread out on the bed and thrust into. He uses, again as requested, only his hand and his spit – and, considering that that works as well as it ever did, Raphael is soon letting out tiny screeches of pain under his breath. He’s an angel, and so stronger than he looks, but if he was a human he’d be inevitably battered and bleeding from this treatment and they both know that well.

“I hope this is what you wanted,” he sighs, as he sets up a hard pace with one hand bruising on Raphael’s thigh and one hand tight in his hair, “I hope you don’t want anything else for no words come to mind.”

Raphael only _whines_ underneath.

He comes after a while, he’s not sure how long, it’s just as pleasurable as he remembers and for a brief moment he feels _alive_ -

(Like when the songs of heaven thrummed through his veins, like when he was specially picked to go down to earth, like when he first taught the humans things and saw understanding blossom in their eyes, like those days in the meadows when he loved freely and well.)

-But it only sparks briefly before he’s pulling out. Slumping down besides a still hard Raphael and quietly watching as the man (angel, _man_ \- for he’s not sure what either of them are but they certainly aren’t angels now) lifts his head and lets out another low, low sound.

He’ll have bruises tomorrow, he notes absently.

“Want to do it again?” He’s still hissing, desperately, sitting up and reaching for him desperately like he wants teeth and fists and anything else that can make him properly _hurt_ , “please, please – let’s do it again-“

“Maybe in a few hours,” he gives softly, and slides off the bed – padding on naked feet to a silent door that _has_ to be the bathroom, “after I’ve showered.”

“But-“

He gestures absently at the hardness between Raphael’s legs, opens the door without another thought, “isn’t that penance enough for now?”

 

\--

 

They never thought that forever would last for so long.

…They never thought that forever would be enough to twist them all into unrecognizable shapes.

They never _thought_ -

Forever is a dangerous thing.


End file.
